Entries in Boulder
(12)

Have a look at this great video to learn more and get your stoke on for the kids at Nationals. If you are on the fence about this being the year to bring your kid to a national-level event, THIS IS THE YEAR! We're pouring as much as we can community-wise into making teh event most especially awesome for the kids. The sport is growing by leaps and bounds with their participation. They deserve to be supported with extra care and stoke in January. C'MON AND HUP UP PARENTS AND KIDS!!!

You hear me brag on all the time on the site and via twitter about Boulder and it's cycling scene. But alas, here is the backstory: it's all about hard work. So many passionate people who live for cycling devote so much of their personal time to push for trails and paths, fighting for not every 'mile' of trail but rather every foot of trail. My good friend and incredible video/photographer Mat Barlow assembled this great 15 minute spot on our town's passion for cycling advocacy for Bike's Belong. Have a view. Get stoked. Maybe this could be your town!

So Boulder's finest chamois-wearing crowd traded in their lycra and helmets for some finer apparel and linen table cloths for its annual fund raising banquet. It was a RIOT and all for a great cause: Trail advocacy for the fat tire set!

Thanks to Oskar Blues, we all had our fill of FREE Pale Ale and Old Chub (make note to self: Old Chub is like 10% alcohol! Limit to 3...strike that TWO...of those bad boys). The night was filled with great speeches including our Mayor Shaun McGrath who's leaving to go work with Obama campaign (and a MASSIVE supporter of the VBP and biking in general), the VBP committee indicating our massive momentum and fund raising as well as BMA award winning speeches. These are the folks who volunteer to make trails for ALL of us to ride.

Everyone there had this air of childish nervousness that was awesome. People were STOKED on what was absolutely new to them having never been on fixies or wood before. Check out the pictures by clicking on the image below....

Boulder is very much, as you'd guess, a cycling-mad town. Now that this inter-webby thing looks as if it's going to be here for some time to come, more people are getting their stuff out there for people to consume and enjoy. Thoughts, images, you name it.

Two buds of mine have started some cool cycling-related web services. One a full up new reporting service on cycling goings-on, another a new and rad photographer capturing the fields in digital celluloid as we hup up, over and through Colorado's courses.

303Cycling.com is Mix1 Racing's Kris Thompson's site of all the cycling happenings in the 303. He's bring some old school beat style reporting to the local cycling scene. Check it out!

David Kutcipal is also from Mix1 and is out there every weekend banging out GREAT photos of all of us wanna be Sven Nys's. He's a racer so he know just when to hit the shutter,. capturing our mugs in all our suffering glory. He captures some great photos from this Saturday's BoulderRacing No. 4 at the Louisville Rec Center.

(Yeah, Jon C: You KNOW you wanna buy this photo of you gettin' your hup on!)

And if above ain't proof enough, just click on these two thumbnails of me below to see how GREAT and hi-resolution these photos David shared with me to ensure you know what they're like (just check out the detail of the snot on my leg.) You will not be dissatisfied! Hup hup!

Week 2(for me) of the Short Track series, sports fans. The thunder and lightning was just dangling over our heads last night but the rains never came to create the mud-bath the first week saw in week 1 at the CU Short Track series at the lovely dirt pile...a.k.a. the Research Center.

I rolled down and prepped for the men's A race at 7:10 and found that the CU folks had built yet another super fast and jump riddled course. Perfect. I had a ball warming up on the course, jumping some of the ol' dirt piles and by 7 felt decent....even for not having the training in my legs. With no rain, the Research Park was an unbelievable dust bowl with choking and unbearable dust making it hard to see lines! My contacts were shrivling up as I was pre-riding!

Each class had huge fields and the A's were no different I managed a 2nd row position and was able to be in the top 20-25 when the gun went off. Not great but hey, it's training. With each lap, I seemed to feel better. I was abel to pick dudes off and aim for the next guy and bridge up...and repeat the process. By the closing laps, my teammates were by the sidelines yelling at me for some reason. Then a dim light bulb went off and as I went by a corner, I yelled at Batey: Dude, is that the chase group??" And he's like "Well, YES! Bridge up there mate!" in his best Manchester accent. I had kept consistent lap times and had bridged to the train trying to catch Fuentes and my team mate Baker, who were crushing it. By the end, I think I sneaked in the top 10 by hooking up with and out sprinting some of the folks in that train, but we'll see. I haven't seen teh results. It's a training race though fer cryin' sakes.Boups, the Garmin-loving entity that he is, brought me a brand new Garmin Forerunner 305 to try out from his store. So he strapped me up and he downloaded all the data. So sick, these things! Apparently, I did run some super consistent lap times. Not scorchers but diesel train-ish. I felt springy out of the corners and I guess the best part is to see my heart rate increase up to and through the last lap. In other words, I got better as the (short) race wore on.

Lastly, the Daily Camera did an article on CU's taking-over of the Short track series. Youo can read it all here. But they got a good shot of my boy Batey in teh White Sex Oakley Hincapies at the A race last week (see main picture at the top). That's me back there behind the Jelly Belly dude, no. 22. Rock on.

What a great evening! Our bud Zach Lee of CommArts, his boss and other compatriots are working on a large project to assist a group in Belgium with a bike park project. Sound Familiar? Zach is also deeply involved with the Valmont Bike Park project, leveraging his considerable graphic arts skills to help create the visual identity for the park here in Boulder.

The proposed park in Belgium is to be called VeloCity in the town of Massmechelen (in the provence of Limburg). This is the region that hosts the Amstel Gold race as well as the GP Stad Hasselt cyclocross race and is about 50 minutes from Blauberg where Dubba, KP and I stayed for our stint in January this year for 'cross master's worlds etc.

A contingency of folks flew over from Za Motherland including the mayor of Maasmechelen, Georges Lenssen, the Executive Director of the Limburg Chamber of Commerce Johann Leten, a journalist Philip Hilven and David Winkels, who is director of the VeloCity bike park project. They came exclusively to explore the idea of creating a Sister Cycling City or some other alliance between Boulder and their town . Zach assembled a GREAT crew of folks from Boulder, all cycling mafia, from those involved in the Valmont Bike Park project to racers (Timmy Duggan was here to represent...even while recovering from is crash! Great to see you man. Very inspiring.), to media (Neal Rogers in za house...great to have beers with you too man!) and lastly Shaun McGrath, our mayor. It was very cool to speak with Georges and Shaun and talk through how community + government can actually get it done.

All in all a great night and fantastic to speak with our counterparts in Belgium getting this park concept together. The sames sets of challenges; the same core passion.

When it rains, it POURS. While the crew is working hard to establish a true Bike Park on the North Side of Valmont Park here in town (LOTS of good news on this project forthcoming folks...), it has been tremendous work for those who have been pursuing this passionately for the last 10 years. Working with the city, the parks and rec department, the community at large...you name it. It has been an example of 'process that works'. Slowly, but it works..

Anyways, take that example and then look at this new privately funded project that I heard about only a few months ago. From the crew that has brought the immensely successful Boulder Indoor Soccer, now they are launching Boulder Indoor Cycling! This town, will TRULY be the epicenter of cycling with world class athletes, world class training facilities, beautiful surroundings, altitude...and now safe, convenient places like Valmont Bike Park and Boulder Indoor Cycling to choose from.

As they advertise on their announcement site:

142m Velodrome Cycling All Levels of Mountain Biking Racing Leagues

Kid's Programs Bicycle Rentals Lots More!

This is going to be sweet. I get to buy me a fixie and learn how to ride the track without going bankrupt going to the Springs.